Titian hair with splendour.

"Fate brought me, and didn't tell me," he answered, with a whimsical
quirk of the mouth, and his trouble lurking behind the sea-deep eyes.

"Wouldn't you have come if you knew I was here?" she urged archly.

"Not for two thousand dollars," he answered, the look of trouble
deepening in his eyes, but his lips were smiling. He had a quaint sense
of humour, and at his last gasp would have noted the ridiculous thing.
And surely it was a droll malignity of Fate to bring him here to her
whom, in this moment of all moments in his life, he wished far away.
Fate meant to try him to the uttermost. This hurdle of trial was high
indeed.

"Two thousand dollars--nothing less?" she inquired gaily. "You are too
specific for a real lover."

"Fate fixed the amount," he added drily. "Fate--you talk so much of
Fate," she replied gravely, and her eyes looked into the distance. "You
make me think of it too, and I don't want to do so. I don't want to feel
helpless, to be the child of Accident and Destiny."

"Oh, you get the same thing in the 'fore-ordination' that old Minister
M'Gregor preaches every Sunday. 'Be elect or be damned,' he says to us
all. Names aren't important; but, anyhow, it was Fate that led me here."

"Are you sure it wasn't me?" she asked softly. "Are you sure I wasn't
calling you, and you had to come?"